The Project Gutenberg eBook of That House I Bought, by Henry Edward Warner.

Why a dedication? Why a preface—a foreword? Why any comment, save the title and the price mark?

Simplicity itself! The preface, foreword, dedication—what you may term it—gives opportunity to apologize for the liberality with which the author betrays his egotism, in the thickly sprinkled perpendicular pronoun.

And yet this plain young tale of plain things could not be told in the third person, since it is a mere setting down of real experience, [Pg 4]painfully truthful and laboriously pruned where imagination was tempted to stray into fields of fiction. There is but one confession of romantic mendacity—and it shall not be made, for it might have happened! Quien Sabe?

And now this little story is dedicated to all who have bought or intend to buy homes, who have lost or expect to lose them; to the bird of passage and to the homing, and to all who love their fellowmen—but very especially to you who read it.

FIRST PERIOD

Thirty-three years ago I formed a box of blocks into a castle and then kicked it down in disgust because I didn't like the chimney. Mother said I displayed temper.

Birds build nests in tree-tops with horse-hair and straw, and odd bits of stuff; but my wife and I aren't birds. Far from it. And we've been going along for fifteen years without a regular nest. All that time I've[Pg 8] been building a house with blocks and kicking it down.

The other day we went out to Mont Alto to take dinner with our friends, and on the way we saw a new house numbered "3313." The number stuck out in letters of silver, burnished into brilliancy by a noonday sun.

"That's an odd number," I remarked. "Anyway you look at it, it's unlucky—3313. And I'm not superstitious."

That's where it all started. We bought the house after dinner. It took fifteen minutes to decide, and in[Pg 9] that time, of course, we didn't notice the place on the dining-room ceiling where the plumbing—but let it pass. The Duke of Mont Alto would fix it up. We had great faith in the Duke. The point is, we owned a house at last. That is, we had started to own it. We were tickled to death—also scared to death. There are two emotions for you, both fatal!

Coming into possession of a castle with ten rooms and large open plumbing, fronting fifty feet and going back one hundred and fifty-three feet to the company's stable, is a thrilling experience. My first thrill was in connection with the initial terms of the contract, which called[Pg 10] for certain financial daring. Up to this time I had laid to my soul the happy thought that a clean conscience is more than money; but believe me, friend, a silver quarter began to look like a gold eagle. Change that in other days went merrily across the table without thought for the morrow, I found myself wearing to a frazzle, counting the cracks in the milled edges affectionately, hopefully, and yet with certain misgivings.

Naturally, we first paced off our yard, to see whether it was 50 by 153 feet, more or less, as shown in the plot. Every man who buys a house paces off his yard. So does his wife.[Pg 11] My wife made seventy-eight steps of it and I made fifty-one, on the length. By deducting for my long legs and adding for her confining skirt we came to the conclusion that mathematics was an inexact science, and decided to do it later with a tape measure.

But for the purpose of this narrative we must get inside the house and look about. We found a wide hall with a grand staircase; a roomy parlor connecting by folding door with a spacious dining-room, and off the dining-room a real conservatory, all glass and tiles. Opening into the pantry a swinging door, and another into the kitchen, and in the wall a refrigerator. In the basement a [Pg 12]furnace with a barometer and thermometer atop. On the second floor four big rooms and a centre hallway, and in the bathroom large, open plumbing and the addition of a shower and spray bath. On the third floor two cozy rooms and another hallway and bath. Item: Slate roof; item: water-heated, hot and cold water all the time sometimes; item: hardwood floor downstairs. Conveniences in every direction, gas and electric fittings throughout. And the whole sheltered by oak trees that leaned over to embrace us, wagging flirtatious branches through the big windows.

My wife looked out through the[Pg 13] window at the distant picture of the low-lying city against the bay, and held my hand. It was as though we had not been married fifteen years, but were beginning our honeymoon—a couple of birds just mated, fetching things for the nest and glorying in its construction—silent in a dream of contemplation, but just ready to burst into song, the song of achievement. She did not reply, but pressed my hand. When finally she spoke, what was in her heart broke its leash.

"I was just wondering," she said, "if we couldn't rent the second floor as a flat to pay the expenses, and then all we put in would be invested in the equity!"

But all sad realities have their recompense in a happy mind. Give me the optimist and a famine and I'll show you a famine licked to a standstill. The combination of confident, hopeful ego and material misfortune never yet met, but that material misfortune took the count in the first round. The man who stands hugging misfortune in his chest has something coming to him. When it arrives it will land right square under that point where, if he were a woman of twenty years ago, he might have worn earrings. Take the other chap,[Pg 15] however—the fellow who not only shakes hands with Trouble, but slaps it on the back, invites it to have a drink, sleeps with it, jollies it until it wrinkles up into a gorgeous grin six miles long; take that chap and put him in the middle of the Sahara Desert with nothing but a glad smile in his pocket, and he'll find a way to coax a mint julep out of the blooming sand!

Do you know, the more I think about the fellow who starts out by howling that things can't be done, the more I'm convinced that the Creator got a lot of cracked forms into the outfit when Man was molded, and these little defects must really be[Pg 16] charged up to accident. The Lord never intended any man made in His image to be afraid of anything that walks on hind legs or all fours, crawls or flies, or flops dismally over the Slough of Despond on a carrion-hunt. And just about the best way to mend this defect, I reckon, is to get married early and start right out buying a house and lot. If a fellow's an invertebrate he'll get past the first payment with a struggle. If he survives the second, it will put some starch into his hide.

Why, bless your heart, Friend, it has all to do with it! The very first[Pg 17] thing a man must do when he buys a house and lot is, get himself into the state of mind. Buying a house and lot is not so much a physical or financial transaction as a philosophical conclusion. You need the house and lot; you must argue yourself into a mental attitude toward that house and lot that simply knocks the props from under every obstacle. The man who is afraid to own his castle is a good citizen, perhaps, in every other respect. But the very best citizen is he who has the courage to own something and pay taxes on it, help support the community, and be useful to himself and to the world that holds him trustee of his possessions.

SECOND PERIOD

When my wife was a little girl with braids down her back, Murphy used to see her in the excited crowd in front of the neighbor's door, as he toted a grand piano to the waiting van. Many a time Murphy has started to give that little girl a penny because she was so cute. Many a time he has reconsidered and kept the penny himself!

It was Murphy who moved us. He is anywhere from seventy to ninety years old now—a stalwart, [Pg 19]steel-muscled young fellow who runs his own wagon and lifts his end of the heaviest burden with a heart as light as his chest is deep and his back broad. His beard is long and white.

How we tore up our old rooms and saw our furniture hustled out, how we looked regretfully back at the den we had papered and fixtured ourselves, with its rich red base and green forest over that, and the light sky—that is all another story. It is another story, too, how mother-in-law bustled here and there helpfully and every now and then added something of her own to our belongings, and how Mamie telephoned every one she knew that we were moving to That[Pg 20] House I Bought! These are things we think of, but do not write.

Murphy was indefatigable. We thought we had a load more than Murphy made it, what with shifting this and changing that, and substituting something and stuffing small truck under tables and empty boxes that we wanted for our conservatory. My wife watched him in admiration.

"Mr. Murphy," she said, "you would be invaluable to the United Railways as a conductor on the Druid Hill avenue line!"

"Oh, Mr. Murphy, couldn't you[Pg 21] take that couch upstairs and drop it off at——"

Murphy smiled and glanced at the wagon, with things tied on over the wheels, and the china closet swinging perilously far out on the tail piece.

My wife hadn't thought of the possibilities of Murphy's lap. The instant he mentioned it, she darted back into the house, quickly to reappear with a double armful of odds and ends that she couldn't get into the suit cases and trunks.

"It's mighty kind of you," she said, with the sort of a smile that nailed[Pg 22] me fifteen years ago. "If you can just carry these little things in your lap——"

When he drove away Murphy's lap looked like the market burden of a suburbanite. And because he was so cheerful about it, and so willing to do so much for so little, and because he is such a good citizen, again I say:

After Murphy had moved us in our real troubles began. I should have said our real joys, for, believe me, the infant troubles of owning your castle are so refined and glorified by the pride of possession that they appear[Pg 23] only as strengthening alloy in the pure gold of content.

It was on Thursday and Friday that Murphy moved us. On Saturday I went to the house, and the lady who will hereafter listen for the tinkle of the door and telephone bells met me, brimming over with cheerfulness and almost as proud of herself as I was of the lord of the manor who strutted like a peacock, as for the first time he showed his feathers in his own front yard.

But as this is to be a truthful chronicle, be it said that my wife is the most wonderful woman in the[Pg 24] world. How on earth she ever got the chairs and tables, the china closet and dishes, the cooking hardware and beds and mattresses and my desk and revolving bookcase, and Heaven knows what, all in place in one day is beyond me.

There were pictures on the walls—old friends in new places, looking down to greet me. A foolish Billiken laughed out loud as I held up my hands in amazement.

"Step high and easy," said my wife. "You'll scratch the hardwood floor," and she rubbed my heelprint from the polish with the hem of her working skirt. Then we started around testing the push-buttons. We[Pg 25] pushed every button there was, and pulled down the curtains to try the effect in the parlor and dining-room. She hauled me around and showed me the marvelous gas range that she was going to do wonders with. That refrigerator, that was yet to have its first load of ice and provisions—it made me hungry just to look at it! We went upstairs and downstairs. I opened and closed every window and made wise-foolish observations on the proper care of a home.

I chucked my coat and cuffs and collar and went to work on little odds and ends of chores about the place.[Pg 26] Hasn't a fellow a right to whistle and sing when he comes home from foraging and finds the lady bird dancing around the new nest?

There was a thermometer on top of the furnace in the basement, and beside it a round thing to tell how much water we were catapulting into the radiators. When there is too much water it overflows from a tank upstairs; when there isn't enough you turn some in downstairs. So I started a march up and down stairs, first turning some on and then scooting skyward to listen to the overflow, and after making this trip about ten times I had an appetite like a typhoid convalescent.

There are church bells and wedding bells, bells that cry the joy of a new birth or toll the sorrow of the huddled family, bells that ring victory in war and bells that scream the hilarity of la fiesta! But for the bell that speaks the common language of all men, I name the dinner bell! The first biscuits were piping hot on the plate.

After the dinner we went out on[Pg 28] the porch—the big, wide porch for which we had planned a swing on chains, and sat rocking and digesting, digesting and rocking, in a perfect picture of resident domesticity. In the house across the street there were lights. The people had just moved in—that is, they had moved in several days before and were just beginning to find the trouble with things and why the gas company could afford to pay considerable dividends on wind. I say, we were sitting there as cumfy as possible, when my wife caught my hand in a convulsive grip.

With the other hand she pointed across the street to the second parlor[Pg 29] blind. I followed her, and felt like a Peeping Tom. There on the blind was a great picture in silhouette—a picture of two figures standing, and the tall, masculine figure was holding both shoulders of the other and looking square into her eyes.

"It's the daughter!" my wife almost whispered. "I know her by her hair ribbon; it's too young for the mother! Look, look, they are going to ki——"

She finished the word with a little gurgle, for they had done it! Not only that, but the kiss was followed by an embrace, and another, and then the lights went out.

I think corporations should be heavily penalized for such breaks in the service. There should be some sort of appliance to keep belts from slipping. More than once the belt has slipped and left that whole residence district in darkness.

THIRD PERIOD

I had always regarded the humorous paragraphs about the price of coal as mere pleasantries. I now deny that they are pleasantries, and they are far from "mere."

There are several grades of coal. Our furnace takes No. 3, and it's $6.60 a ton, April price. The man who dominates the situation told me by way of consolation that if it hadn't been for the big strike coal would be 50 cents a ton cheaper. I can't see how that sort of consolation helps a fellow.

Our house burns about ten or[Pg 32] twelve tons, normal conditions. We figured that about eight tons now would be the proper caper, and we could pay the difference next winter if driven to it. From the way the furnace ate coal to take the chill off the house the first day, I could see the Board of Charities asking me my name, address, age, social condition and whether my parents ever went to jail.

Now $6.60 times eight tons is $52.80, and that's more than taxes, water rent and interest on a house and lot. So when the man backed up with a cartload and began to throw it in off-handedly, I was pained. A coal-heaver should treat $52.80 with[Pg 33] more respect. I have seen men throw high-grade ore out of the Independence mine with the same callous indifference, without myself being shocked; but here was a new situation. It was my $52.80 he was throwing around like dirt, and I spoke to him about it.

"How," I said, "can you have the heart to dump $52.80 into my cellar without ceremony? You should at least remove your hat."

William made the first fire. I instructed him to lay on the coal as scarcely as possible, and to go slow with the draughts. So he threw on[Pg 34] six shovelsful of my $52.80, opened everything and ran it up to 204 degrees F. Any man who sat ten minutes in our house and then dared to expose himself in a Turkish steam room would freeze to death in ten seconds.

We had a fire in the furnace two or three days. I got interested in (a) a newly patented ash sifter (b) and a process for mixing ashes with some chemical solution that would restore a ton of coal for twenty-five cents. If you have never sifted ashes, you've missed something. You take a couple of shovelsful of ashes and dump them in the sifter. Then you pick up the sifter and agitate it. If I were[Pg 35] employing an ash sifter, I should get one addicted to chills and ague, or St. Vitus' dance, or something. Then I could be sure he wasn't loafing on the job! Well, after you've shivered the sifter, busted a suspender button, twisted your backbone into a pretzel, filled your eyes, ears, nose, and lungs with dust and cussed your patron saint, you've got the net result: One piece of half-burned coal, six clinkers, and the top of a tin can.

That chemical process to make coal out of ashes for a quarter a ton is a good thing—for the inventor. With childlike confidence I bought a bottle of it. After ruining a barrel of perfectly good ashes and backsliding[Pg 36] from the church of Martin Luther I gave it up. Hereafter we will burn our coal as long as it will burn, and the ashes may go hang! I could have earned $50 at my profession in the time I was trying to beat an honest coal dealer out of $6.60.

May good fortune attend the man who thought of putting a shower bath in That House I Bought! The water comes from overhead for one thing, and shoots into the delighted legs of the languorous for another, from the sides. It invigorates, cleanses, and tickles.

Ballington Booth says man is regenerated by soup, soap, and salvation. But I would say, at first blush, that no man can get the full effect of regeneration on anything short of a shower bath in his house.

I began by reducing my costume to a pleasant frame of mind and doing a few acrobatic stunts, deep breathing, setting-up exercises, and various liver-limberings. A free and easy perspiration set in. That, say all the doctors, is good for the system. Then I stepped blithely into the shower, drew the rubber curtain close and, commending my soul to all the gods I could call to mind, took a long breath and turned her on.

At first the water was icy cold, but as soon as that in the pipes had run out I was violently assaulted by a steaming deluge straight from the bowels of Hades. Calmly removing the first layer of skin as it was boiled off, I reached for the spigot and turned as per directions, to the right. Instantly some one threw an iceberg into the tank and at the first shower of Chilkootian damp I was converted into an icicle.

Boiled to a color that would excite the envy of an ambitious lobster, on one side, and frozen to a consistency that would inspire a Harlequin block on the other, my emotions ran correspondingly hot and cold to a [Pg 39]delirium of despair, as I found that no matter how I turned I got either hot or cold, and never a happy medium. My wife, who was downstairs with the kitchen door shut, said she could hear my remarks distinctly, and added that she would have forever hung her head in shame had company been calling at the time.

It didn't occur to me, until I had been cooked and uncooked a dozen times that this thing might be done from the outside just as well. I stepped out and manipulated with a broom handle, poking it behind the curtain and jabbing, pushing, and pulling, hauling, twisting at those [Pg 40]infernal mechanical devices with an energy born of insanity. Finally, by some accident or other, I got the water just right and stepped in again.

It was delicious. Never was there such a grateful sense of appreciation as that I felt as I recovered my temper and went back to my beneficent gods. The water was not too cold, not too hot.

I looked up and around, tried all the valves, hammered on the wall, and then yelled to my wife:

With good things it were always thus. The minute a man really begins to enjoy life it's time to die. There is always a fly in the custard.

FOURTH PERIOD

Our porch is one of those accommodating porches with plenty of room, a standing invitation to company. Whenever company comes I have to convert myself into a moving van and tote all the furniture out from the parlor.

The Duke of Mont Alto, and the Duchess, dropped in one evening with the Purdys, and I began to move the parlor. What with spade pushing and furniture moving, I've got Sandow backed off the board. It's wonderful what a little regular training will do for a fellow! But what gets[Pg 43] me is, how on earth did Murphy ever maneuver the big chair with the green upholstery into the house at all? It is exactly half an inch wider in every dimension than our door—but as Murphy got it in it was up to me to get it out. I was pushing and shoving and twisting, trying it sideways and upside down, straight ahead and backing like a mule, stealing a fraction of space by half-closing the screen door, when my wife took hold of a leg to help me. That settled it. We stuck, in such a position that I could neither get myself out nor the chair in again.

The Duke and the Duchess and the Purdys all volunteered to assist by[Pg 44] suggesting various things that they thought I hadn't thought of thinking of. I kept my temper and formed my mouth into a counterfeit smile, to show how polite a Southern gentleman could be in trying circumstances. Then I gave one mighty heave, determined to push the chair through or the jam down, and stuck worse than ever.

"Certainly I can get through," I replied; "I'm just doing this to make it look difficult!"

The Purdys laughed at that, and the Duke said I was a comical cuss. You see, he had an idea I was trying[Pg 45] to amuse the company. That made me so mad that I dropped the chair to spit on my hands, and when I dropped the chair the stubborn thing fell right through the door of its own accord, and I straightened up like a General, and remarked:

"Now I suppose you'll make a pool among you and gobble all the credit for that!"

During the evening my wife got out some grape-fruit, and in the stilly night, the stars twinkling overhead and the grass growing silently, hardly disturbing us at all, it was [Pg 46]exceedingly pleasant to hear the spoons go slippety-slosh into the evasive juices that reluctantly gave up about half what the labor was worth.

But what I started to write about was the house party across the street. When you're sitting on the porch of your own house doing nothing but listening to the ebb and flow of grape-fruit juice, you can't help noticing the strings of Japanese lanterns over yonder, and listening to the gay laughter of young people as they madly hurl bean-bags into a hole in a plank, shrieking the while and guying each other apace. O, Postoffice! O, clap-in-an-clap-out! O, Puss-in-the-corner! O, Youth!

The Duke was saying something about the time when suburban streets would be two hundred feet wide to make landing places for aeroplanes, and when the human appetite would be regulated by push-buttons ranged along the diaphragm. But I didn't hear a word.

I yearned to be across the street. That was uncomplimentary to company, but nevertheless I yearned. So did all the rest, only they aren't telling about it. When a man has passed into the sere and yellow he has a right to the consolation of retrospect. Frankly, for a moment I wished I didn't have any house. I wanted to be over there where the young folks[Pg 48] were, pitching bean-bags. And later, when they gathered around the piano and sang discordantly all the popular songs, I wanted to be there and join my voice in the music. It was awful music, but I wanted to howl right along with the young ones.

When the company had gone I wrestled the green chair back into the house by way of the widest window, but my mind was still full of the thought that had seized me—of the youth, and gaiety, and glory of green years. As I went to close the shutters, the last of the young people had just gone up the street singing. I gave one good night glance at the parlor windows of the house across[Pg 49] the way. Then I started, called my wife, and we riveted our two noses to the pane.

The Man Silhouette was talking earnestly to the Girl Silhouette, and she was shaking her head. But suddenly she leaned closer to him, and threw her arms about his neck, and he kissed her, and she ran from the room and left him standing there.

Presently the Girl Silhouette came back, leading by the hand a large, fat Silhouette with whiskers. I recognized him as the man I had seen[Pg 50] mowing the lawn and working the garden hose. He shook hands with the Man Silhouette, and kissed the Girl on the forehead, and joined their hands, and seemed to call toward the hallway; whereupon a fourth Silhouette came in.

They all stood together, and bowed and nodded and that sort of thing for an unconscionably long time, until our noses were cold from the glass. And then the Silhouette with the whiskers pushed all the other Silhouettes in the direction in which we knew their dining room lay, and stepped back to turn off the lights.

When there was nothing to see but the blank curtain, we went upstairs; and after I had retired my wife crept away. I awoke and found her an hour later, sound asleep with her nose against the pane, her unseeing eyes turned toward the house across the way, and a smile on her lips. I lifted her and put her on the bed—and she didn't stir until morning.

"That Man Silhouette," I said at breakfast; "did you see him last night after the—er—incident on the blinds?"

"Certainly not!" she replied, almost indignantly. "You men all think women are curious."

"But," she added, as she poured the coffee, "I'm going to see what he looks like to-night, if I never get to bed; and I'm going to see her if I have to go over there and borrow butter!"

What would I not give to be back myself, to the time when we, mayhap, were silhouettes for the entertainment of our neighbors! But come on, old man, come on! You must go straight ahead, day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year! Somewhere ahead there is[Pg 53] a marble shaft, and a place with the roses; but your cradle is broken, your little tin wagon is rusted, your Noah's Ark is buried under the dust of years—and you have had your frivols!

FIFTH PERIOD

Buying a house when spring is young involves a lot of thought and anxiety, from which is developed a high nervous pressure. You alternate days of earnest application and enforced recuperation.

Our yard, we found, was admirably adapted to quarry purposes, or would make an excellent clay bank. William told us he would level up the back lot and then put on a top soil and add a sort of compost of manure[Pg 55] and loam, in which we could plant things. I reserved a square 18 by 25 feet for a patent wire pigeon fly.

"I will raise pigeons," I replied with dignity, "for their giblets. I love pigeon giblets. You may have the squibs."

"I said squibs," I insisted stanchly. "You should say squabs," suggested my wife mildly. "I will have squibs or nothing," I replied, as becoming master of the house, and squibs it was. So be it known, we are going to raise squibs.

"And I," said my wife, "shall raise[Pg 56] a tomato. The back of the lot is in an all-day sun, and tomatoes thrive in the sun."

"And a turnip or two," I said. "If you plant a couple of turnips and let nature take its course, you'll have turnips all over the place. I've heard that turnips and belgian hares are noted for——"

"You cannot train a pea," I said scornfully. "You may train a pig, or a dog, but you cannot train a pea."

One of the reasons women may not vote is that they say just such foolish things as that! Train a pea, indeed![Pg 57] I would as lief try to train a doorknob!

With this little difficulty settled and out of the way, we made ready for serious work.

We were rather late getting into our gardening, but made up in enthusiasm what we lacked in knowledge. With a piece of string and a few sticks, Yours Truly laid off a strip from the steps around the front porch to the side foundation; and then with a spade the same victim of circumstances broke his back in three places and wore two lovely blisters into the palms of his forepaws.

Uncle Henry got his foot into the soil with a spade which, peculiarly[Pg 58] enough, was borrowed from one named Cain, who lives next door. That other Cain was the father of agricolists. Observe how history carries itself down the ages with consistency! And to complete the picture, observe me watering the earth with my sweat!

Who in thunder ever invented the scheme of hiding pieces of brick, broken concrete, can tops, chunks of wood and the wreck of dishes right where a fellow wants to dig a garden? I like a practical joke myself, but that is going too far. In taking off the top soil there was a reasonably clear thoroughfare, but when the heft of my hoof went against the heel[Pg 59] of the spade for the first downward dash, it struck an impenetrable ambush of mason's findings.

To make it worse, my wife stood on the porch cheerfully lending her aid in the form of advice. The man who owned the spade sat comfortably on his own porch reading The Evening Sun, and now and then glancing over the top at me with an amused smile. William came along.

The Duke of Mont Alto whizzed by in his automobile and waved his[Pg 60] hand. He tooted twice. I think he was kidding me. A friend, wending homeward with his dinnerpail, paused to observe that it was hot weather for digging. That self-consciousness that makes the whole world miserable on occasion seized me. From every window I imagined delighted neighbors looking on; in the twitter of the birds I heard merry giggles.

But against and in spite of all these handicaps I persisted. I had as implements, in addition to Cain's spade—how I love that connection!—one table knife, one garden claw, one trowel, one sharp stick, one cracked hoe, and one perfectly good vocabulary. I went after the clay ground[Pg 61] with my hands in preference to any or all of the tools, and after half an hour of agony had removed, by actual count, one hundred and thirty-seven large stones and a small pile of pebbles, none of the pebbles weighing more than one pound. Then with my hands I crumbled the dirt chunks into powder and carefully sifted, smoothed off, rolled, tumbled, and otherwise adjusted the net product.

The sudoriferous glands of Yours Truly worked overtime. Yours Truly excreted, exuded, flooded. To be swimming around in your own atmosphere is a novel and sometimes[Pg 62] pleasurable experience. It's funny how a man bowls sixteen-ounce balls until his ribs crack and sits in a Turkish bath until each pore is a geyser, and yet when that same result is obtained by means of honest labor and by pushing a spade, he complains.

I cut the lines of this little front garden deep and clean, and sloped the pulverized earth back so that there would be a perpetual irrigation in the ditch from the overflow. Rather clever idea, that. Then my wife got out the dwarf nasturtium seeds and we put them in a box, and the box in the conservatory, and myself into the shower. I don't see how a[Pg 63] farmer can get along without a shower in the house.

We had about six hundred nasturtium seeds in envelopes bearing totally misleading pictures of what they will look like. I filled a box with rough earth and then pulverized it with an ice-pick. Then I stuck holes with my finger and put one seed in each hole. After my fingernails had developed into a screaming argument for the use of soap, my wife discovered that I had planted them too deep.

Nothing happened to those nasturtium seeds for five days. On the morning of the fifth day I heard a scream from my wife and rushed downstairs, to find her leaning over the nasturtium box.

Then I yelled. I grabbed her in both arms and danced around the conservatory like a plumb fool. Then we both ran back and leaned over the box, and raved. There were half a[Pg 65] dozen little greenish-white stalks sticking out, each top curved over like a dear little ingrowing nail.

"Cute!" I said, in disgust. "Why, my dear, they're not cute—they're wonderful!"

I pushed the window up a little to give them air. My wife caught my arm excitedly and pulled it down again.

"Sprouts," I said, "come on potatoes, onions, cabbages, and beets. These are not sprouts; they are bulbs!"

She said not a word, but got a book and showed me a picture of a bulb—a tulip bulb.

If there's anything that makes home unhappy, it's that atmosphere of superiority in a woman. I tried to point out to her that she couldn't believe everything she saw in a book.

"History," I said, "is continually changing. That may have been a bulb at the time of publication, but——"

It was no use. I had to give in. She had the dots on Uncle Henry for sure, but you've got to give it to me[Pg 67]—you've just got to. How was this one? Listen:

"Of course they're sprouts. I knew they were sprouts all the time. I was just trying to catch you."

SIXTH PERIOD

There are four little disconnected adventures in my notes that must find a place somewhere, and so I have decided to bunch them all in this chapter. If you'll draw your chair up closer, I'll give them to you in order:

The fact has been mentioned that we yearned to let our second floor of four beautiful rooms, private bath and shower, closet in every room, large plumbing, polished floors and heaven knows what. As a condition precedent to becoming a flatlord, I appealed to the populace through the want ad. My first copy ran like this:

There were other things I overlooked, but we decided to let it go at that. Certainly virtues had been mentioned which should overcome any prejudice against suburban life and the crickets. Blithely I passed the copy over the counter and inquired the cost. The man smiled.

"Why don't you make this a display ad. and get a seven-cent flat rate on a six months' contract?" he inquired.

To make a long recital short, he put it satisfactorily into four lines[Pg 71] and we waited for replies. We'll skip the first forty or fifty that didn't suit us. One day there came a gentleman who looked at our four rooms, raved over them and made a proposition, to wit: If we would put a gas range and sink in the red room, open up the wall in the front room and build a sleeping porch for his baby, furnish refrigerating plant for all the baby's milk and allow him the free use of the telephone, he would take our four rooms for three months at $18 a month.

"My good friend," I said, with suppressed emotion, "you overwhelm us. Can't we remove the roof and build a little nursery for the baby,[Pg 72] and rig you up a rainy-weather playroom in the basement? We expected to get $50 a month, unfurnished, without changes; but you have made us to see the error of our conceit. Can't we let you have the piano at the end of your three months, to move away to your future home, as an expression of good will?"

"No," I insisted, "we will not have it any other way. You must accept our hospitality, sir—you simply must! My wife has a diamond ring that I'm sure she would be delighted to give your wife, and any time you want a trunk carried up or down stairs just call on me. My clothes would about[Pg 73] fit you—allow me to lend you my dress suit and pajamas! Not a word, sir, not a word! I will not permit you to excel me in generosity. And as for your $18. I wouldn't think of taking it! Give it to a fund to provide red flannel nightshirts for the little heathens in Timbuctoo. They need the night shirts, and, believe me, I thoroughly detest money!"

He went away, and going in told the conductor that he was glad he didn't get roped into that lunatic asylum.

What a wonderful lot of push [Pg 74]buttons a contractor can get into ten rooms and a basement!

My wife and I jammed our thumbs into at least thirty different kinds, trying them out. There were push buttons to turn on the electric light, push buttons to call the indefinite servant, push buttons to ring bells of all sorts. I half expected to find a push button that would kick a collector off the porch, but was disappointed.

A push button in That House I Bought turns on the porch light and another on the second floor lights the[Pg 75] hallway at the foot of the grand staircase, so that in case of burglars the lady of the house doesn't have to go down in advance, carrying the lamp.

"That," I said, "is a distinct convenience. I can imagine the discomfiture of the burglar who suddenly finds himself illuminated for a Mardi Gras pageant, all ready to be shot up like a cheese or a porous plaster."

"The extent of my murders," I replied, "would be limited only by the supply of burglars."

It does a fellow a lot of good, when he is just moving into the responsibilities of a real citizen, to perform mental assassinations like that. I piled up my dead and we passed on.

We found, by pushing another button, that the Consolidated Gas and Electric Light Company had provided the chandeliers in both parlor and dining room with as many globes as could be crowded into the set. The man who put them in left them all turned on. We burned fully seven cents' worth of watts before it occurred to us to limit the incandescence by turning off a few globes. Then my wife got a mania for economizing,[Pg 77] and it was Uncle Henry on a high chair under every individual set of lights, tickling the little flat black key things into a subdued quiescence. We left one watt incubator in each set, with the understanding that if company came we'd turn on the whole business and average it up on the month by sitting as late as possible on the front porch.

But there was one button that got me. It was in the front bedroom with the double-mirror doors on the big closet. We pushed it and didn't hear a thing. Logically, it ought to do something. I pushed again and listened for the tinkle. My wife went upstairs and downstairs, while I[Pg 78] pushed, and every now and then I'd yell at her.

"No," she would reply. "Push it real quickly and see if you can't take it by surprise!"

I tried every method I could think of to make that push button earn its existence. Every day since I've tried it, determined to learn what it ought to do or die in the attempt. But to this day that push button is a mystery.

Billy Pentz wants to know if we will keep a bee at our house. We will[Pg 79] not. And another thing, I don't know why bees are kept in an apiary. I cannot see the line of identification between bees and apes. Apes should be kept in an apiary; bees should be kept in a beeswax.

But we have been thinking about a cow. There is a company cowary right back of our house, and when the wind is from the south the call of the diary is strong upon us. Pardon me, I should have written the dairy. There's another digression. Why should the transportation of two letters change a notebook into a milk foundry?

I watched William milking a cow in the cowary, and the ease with[Pg 80] which he performed what to me seemed no less than magic was simply astounding. Sitting there as quietly as you please, on an inverted bucket, with an uninverted bucket between his knees, he directed streams of embryo butter and ice-cream and custard into the centre of a foaming pool with no more concern than a Queen of the sixth century would show in knifing a kneeling page.

"We will get a cow," I announced briefly, but with that masterful tone that identifies me in any company.

My wife looked at me, the way some women look at some men. I withered but held my ground.

Now, I've never taken a dare from any woman. I hiked right back down the patch, careless of the newly sown grass plots, and blundered into the cowary.

"William," I said, "arise and hand me that can! I'm going to show you how I used to milk when I was a cowboy!"

If this were fiction it would be funny, but it's fact; and many a thing that's funny in fiction is tragedy in fact.

William handed me the bucket. I said, "So, Bossy," and seated myself just as I had seen William do it, with[Pg 82] my feet crossed and the bucket between my knees. That it slipped the first time and slopped over my trousers was merely an incident. After I'd managed a half-nelson grip with my knee caps I grabbed a couple of the cow's depending protuberances and squeezed. Nothing happened. I squeezed again and pulled. A couple of drops trickled into the palms of my hands. Encouraged, I tried a jiu-jitsu stunt designed to astonish the cow into yielding to superior intelligence, and she looked around at me and grinned.

I say that cow grinned. Some one once told me that among animals only hyenas could grin. Then[Pg 83] this cow was a hyena, that's all.

I tackled her again, shoving my head into her ribs after the manner of certain yokels I had observed, as if there must be a secret spring to push open the vents. William and the cow grinned a duet. I pulled and pushed, twisted and tugged, coaxed and threatened, and finally I said something to that cow that was uncouth.

She lifted her near hind hoof and sent the bucket flying. Then she moved over against me and mingled me with the soft sod. I got up and silently handed William a quarter, winking the while to accent the hush.[Pg 84] When I went into the house I said:

"My dear, William informs me that the company may keep a cow around here, but by the terms of our purchase we may not. It's a rank discrimination, but I'm afraid we cannot have a cow. The Duke of Mont Alto and the city ordinances will not permit it!"

I don't know the botanical names of the birds around our house; in fact, I am not sure that botany is the science of birds. But, at any rate, we have half a dozen trees and each one[Pg 85] is a choir loft. No wheezing organ, with rattling foot pedals and thumping water-pump, disturbs the clear harmonies of their music. No sonorous basso in the amen corner growls out a flat profundo to insult the memory of Phœbe Carey; no shrill tenor raises his chin until his Adam's apple sticks out like a loose bung in a cider barrel, to shriek his blasphemy of divine music!

We have just the little birds, whose throats swell and swell until you would think they must burst, and who sing their love-bugles through the branches careless of their audience. Wonderful cadenzas chase each other in a game of lyric tag, never [Pg 86]wearying, never breaking. Trills that can be written only in spirit composition—long notes that sometimes salute a saint, sometimes absolve a sinner—sibilant sighs that bring up memories—all these things we have in our choir, and upon them there is no mortgage!

There's a nasty little fat robin outside our kitchen door, though, who is some day going to meet disaster.

We feed the robins on crumbs, and throw them such little delicacies as cracked marrow bones, chunks of suet and bits of sugar. When they have finished eating they hurry to the end of the house, where there is always a little water trickling out to make a[Pg 87] bird fountain. (Item: I must build a regular bird fountain.) This nasty little fat robin, who is going straight into trouble, is a hog on wings. All the others will be cheerfully setting about their dinner, when he will rush in, nibble a single bite and then stand guard over the rest, to keep them from it. I do not know whether to call him Rottenfeller for hogging it, or Rosenfelt for fighting.

Now Kadott is my pet. I've called her Kadott for a little missionary Japanese friend, who lives at Hadji Konak, and I wonder if the Japanese at Hadji Konak will appreciate the honor? The one thing that makes me fond of Kadott is that she is very[Pg 88] much in love with me; but she annoys me, too, because she makes me keep my distance and still coquettes. She has an odd little trick of coming nearly to me, turning her head and cocking her ear, as if to say:

Some of these days she will eat from my hand. But now she only comes close and darts away at the first approach. She has built her nest and she has the mother instinct. When she has hatched her little family I'm going to be Uncle Henry to every one of them.

And that is what I've been trying to get to. If the nasty little fat robin[Pg 89] butts into Kadott's family relations, there will be a murder. My hands will be red with the blood of a bandit.

When you come out to That House I Bought, stay all night and listen to the birds in the early morning. It seems to me that a man who listens to the birds in the right spirit ought to make a fairly decent citizen, in time.

SEVENTH PERIOD

"Love," she said to me, apparently apropos of nothing at all, "must be a farce in a country where there is no moonlight."

"Across the street," she explained, "there were two Silhouettes in the parlor Monday night, and one went[Pg 91] away early; the other had her handkerchief to her eyes——"

"Well—er—what's this got to do with moonlight?" I demanded, changing the subject.

"It was moonlight last night, and it's moonlight to-night," she replied, "and all the derbies on the hat-rack over there belong to the men in the family, and it's nine-thirty. It seems to me that if I were the Man Silhouette, I'd at least write, but the mailman hasn't stopped there but once in four days, and then he only delivered[Pg 92] a circular, because I got one myself and I recognized it by the big red type on the envelope, and—I think it's a shame, that's what I do, and I don't care, so there!"

You know, when a woman doesn't care, so there, she usually gets all worked up about it. It's a way she has of showing her indifference.

"No," she replied; "but I thought, if he came to-night, it's so bright and all, I'd get a peep at his face. It would be awful if he were a dissipated man!"

"You don't know her, and you don't know him, and you don't know her[Pg 93] folks, and what difference does it make to you whether he runs a church or a roulette wheel?" I asked mildly.

I went into the house and—well, yes, I might as well admit it—sat at the window where I could command a clear view of the parlor opposite. This affair was getting to be personal with me. And then I think a fellow ought to show an interest in anything that is close to his wife's sympathies. So while she watched on the porch, I watched from the window.

He didn't come that night, and he didn't come the next night. But while I was watching—not obtrusively, you know, but just sympathetically—a messenger boy ran up the steps.[Pg 94] The door opened halfway and he delivered a message and waited a moment, and then left, dashing up street on his wheel. I was pondering, when our telephone bell rang. I answered. A sweet young voice called:

"Oh, please, sir, please get off the line and let me have it! This is very important!"

I mumbled something and hung up the receiver. Then I went back to my window and gazed across the[Pg 95] street again. The hall light was turned on—the first time I had noticed it alone. The pale blind was down, but the light—why, a Silhouette at the telephone!

"You act like it," she said, laughing and disengaging herself. "What have you got?"

"She's calling him up at the Belvedere! Telegram—telephone in hall—light—Silhouette—go look!"

She ran all the way to the window, and then I had to sit down and tell her just how I knew it must be the[Pg 96] Man Silhouette. All the circumstances were too plain. There was no doubt of it. Her intuition backed up my judgment. We sat on the porch until after ten, and then a closed taxi was driven rapidly to the little walk. A man, bundled in a big coat, handed the chauffeur something and dismissed him, and hurried up to the porch. The door swung open without summons and he entered.

"My dear," I said, "if you had quarreled and if you were making up on a moonlight night, would you [Pg 97]bother about wasting kilowatts of electricity?"

"That's just where you're mistaken," I ventured. "It was all outside, but they're getting all they need of it through the cracks on the sides of the curtain."

"He's stingy," was her reply; and I'll admit, myself, that he might have turned up the lights just a little while.

But all this is foreign to the House. We awoke next morning to a busy experience, for our friends descended upon us. You know there is one stage through which you will have to pass when you buy a house, and for the sake of a name we'll call it the Inspection of Your Intimates.

The ink is hardly dry on the deed, or mortgage, or agreement, or whatever your instrument of conveyance may be, before you are on the telephone inviting them out to look at[Pg 99] you. You want all your friends to see your new house—to make faces at it and chuck it under the chin, to talk baby talk to it and admire your pantry.

The first crack out of the box Mrs. Smith walks in, sizes up the exterior with a sweeping glance as she enters, sniffs the atmosphere laden with fresh smells and as you stand at judgment remarks:

Now, "H-m!" may mean any one of twenty-seven things. You stand on one foot and wait.

"My goodness, what small rooms!" is the next remark, which is somewhat softened by the addition, "but[Pg 100] the wall paper is very pretty," and the reservation damns the praise again, "in places."

All this time you are alternating flushes and chills. Your spinal column is a sort of marathon track for emotions. You go through the house with her and show the bathroom with its shower, over which she enthuses, and you are in the seventh heaven of satisfaction. But the minute she reaches the third floor, which is a sort of three-quarter floor, your heart sinks again, because she remarks:

"I suppose you will just use these little rooms for storage!" And you had fondly thought of occupying them yourself and renting the[Pg 101] second floor to help out your investment.

Mrs. Smith thinks your piano is too brilliant on the hardwood floor, and when she has gone home you shove a rug under it. Mrs. Jones comes next day and says it sounds dead on the rug, and you put it back on the floor. Mrs. Brown gets you to try it both ways in her presence and concludes that it lacks elevation and would sound better if you took it upstairs; while Mrs. Harris conceives the novel idea of turning the conservatory into a music-room for the benefit of the base tiling.

Your prides-in-chief are the linen closet, the big closets in each room,[Pg 102] the gas range, the refrigerator built into the wall and the plumbing fixtures. And you are a bit peeved when Mrs. Johnson passes every one of these features by with calm indifference and raves over an unimportant railing you've had hammered onto the back porch. Nearly every one of your Intimates comments on the fact that your yard looks like a quarry, but you assure each one that William is going to put on a top soil and seed it down and you are going to plant a turnip and substitute a peach tree for the oak that was struck by lightning. You work yourself up into a human catalogue of advantages as you describe your wonderful plans,[Pg 103] and then your Intimate shakes her head smilingly.

"My dear," she says, like a blooming icicle, "John and I had all these plans when we owned a house, and we never did get our yard fixed. You have no idea of the work and the expense and the disappointments! And don't plant any Government seeds. They never come up."

It's an odd coincidence that your Congressman has just supplied you with a lot of radish, onion, lettuce, and other seeds, and that you have been lying awake nights passing resolutions of thanks to the Agricultural Department.

But there is one who comes[Pg 104]—Heaven bless her!—who goes into seven fits of joy and envies you your happiness. You love her because of it—and because she is your mother.

EIGHTH PERIOD

The real enjoyment of home comes when for the first time you are taking a week off.

You curl your lip in a sneer and tilt your nose and snort, and make yourself superior.

"Atlantic City! Do I look easy? Atlantic City, boardwalk, red hot sun, skinny bathers, flies in the dining-room, at $7 a day? Not on your life! I'm going to stay home and take the rest cure—that's me! I'm going to sleep late, eat four meals a[Pg 106] day, spade my garden when I feel like it and enjoy life right. I'm going to take a shower bath every thirty-six minutes and no company—not a blooming visitor—the whole week. What I want is absolute rest."

I was getting fagged, brain-weary and nervous from a terrific strain of making an appearance at work. The bluff went over and the powers that be told me to go away and cut out the telephone. So out to That House I Bought forthwith hied me—instanter removed. To drop the load, to forget the worries, to submerge the [Pg 107]business ego in a week of solid rest! I was getting near to Heaven.

The first morning I awoke with a start, leaped out of bed, shed my pajamas and grabbed for the things on the chair. I was dressed and halfway down stairs before I realized that it was off duty for mine. O joy! I got The Sun from the porch and read the leading locals and saw half a dozen stories sticking out between the lines. The telephone was handy; I'd call up the office and suggest—whoa! The telephone had been cut out.

"Good!" I exclaimed internally. "I'll have late breakfast and sleep a couple of hours."

"While I'm getting breakfast," she said, "suppose you turn the hose on the porch, and just kind of dust it off with this broom. The girl won't come until next week, and you know I'm a sick woman."

I squirted the hose and dusted. Scrubbery is one of my short talents. When the sun dried it off, the porch was streaked from end to end, and I had to do it over with my wife supervising.

"It is so sweet for us to be together in our nice new home," she said, as I dutifully toted dishes to the kitchen. "You wipe while I wash them, and then you can take a hammer and some tacks and fix these old chairs for the[Pg 109] kitchen. When you get that done you can put up some shelves for me in the fruit pantry, and why don't you arrange your books to-day? They're in all sorts of places. There are lots of sticks and stones around the yard. Suppose you pick them up and mow the lawn. Oh, I know what you can do! You can level up all these little gullies where the rain has cut up the loose dirt in the back yard. Isn't it just too dear for anything for us to have a whole week of fun fixing up around the house? I think after you get through with the yard you can——"

Some people think cleaning up around a new house is pie for papa, but it isn't. There is none of that glamour you read about in "The Delights of Home" articles, and it isn't a thing on earth but a case of chuck the cuffs and collars and yield your soul to perspiration and persistence.

First, when you start to follow the carpenter into nooks and corners of the cellar and little hiding places in the top floor, you find that he has invented innumerable kinds of leavings, deftly tucked here and there where nobody but a second-sight man would ever figure on locating them. You begin to pick up and after you've stooped about two thousand times you[Pg 111] remember the picture in the liver medicine ad., where the man stands with his hands on the small of his back, looking unhappy and pessimistic.

And it isn't only picking up, but it's cleaning out. What to do with the stuff bothers you. It's a cinch to burn the shavings and little pieces of wood and that kind of material, but you've got to deal again with bits of putty and glass and bent nails and tacks and other unburnable debris, and you hate to throw them into the bathtub because of the plumbing. You finally throw them out the window.

Later you realize that you threw them out unwisely. That's when you[Pg 112] start to work on your lawn and side yard, and every time you stick in the trowel where you are setting out plants you fetch up a quart of junk. The astonishing lot of garbage they used to make the ground you stand on is bad enough, but with the things you've thrown out added to it the situation is exasperating.

You run your lawn mower over a nail, pick it up, and then wonder why providence ever let you get away from an early death, for sheer imbecility. It was the nail you picked up in the third floor and didn't know how to dispose of it. Pulling up a little bit of ground with your hands, to make a place for some dwarf [Pg 113]nasturtium, you cut your finger with the piece of glass you threw out the side window. It's vexing. What to do with this wreckage a second time puzzles you, and you finally throw it over into the next lot. That's the time you find that your neighbor was watching you from his windows, and—it's not easy to be nice to people who throw their refuse over the lot line, is it?

But the worst of all this cleaning-up business is that your wife bosses the job.

Somehow or other, the man who loves his wife still draws the line at matrimonial dictatorship, even in so small a thing as picking up after the[Pg 114] carpenter. Neither you nor your wife intended to let it go that far, and she really doesn't intend to go home to her mother, nor do you really intend to drown your domestic griefs in drink. But with some provocations man gets peevish and woman irritable.

The night before it had rained. Our back yard was soaked to the marrow, if a yard has a marrow. We had a wire stretched to mark our lot line and keep people off the grass seed and the garden. On the heels of the rain came one of the company drivers, took down the wire with deliberation and criminal purpose, and drove two goldarned mules and a[Pg 115] wagon right through that yard, cutting ruts six inches deep and scattering parsnips, parsley, beans, peas, and lettuce all over the place. In a new development you have to stay at home twenty-four hours a day and yell at such people, or they'll have you rutted out of your possession.

It was pitiful to see those great ruts when we had worked so hard, and the torn-up garden with its sprouts here and there showing what it might have been. But it was more pitiful to see me walking around with a pocketful of manslaughter, looking for the driver who did it. Every driver on the place admitted that he didn't do it; so I came to the[Pg 116] conclusion that it couldn't have been done at all. I was having delusions. The ruts and ruined gardens were figments of a disordered imagination.

I got the rake, shovel, spade, hoe, hand cultivator, lawn mower, trowel, and a couple of things you lift young plants with and assembled myself on the lawn to put in a good day's work. With the rake I started to rake off the side yard, and got about halfway through when I discovered that the lawn needed mowing. Halfway through with the mowing job my eye spotted certain thick spots of weeds, and so I started weeding. Halfway[Pg 117] through with that I stopped to pick up sticks and stones and throw them, as usual, over my neighbor's lot. Then it was this thing and that thing, never finishing anything, until finally I chucked all things and started something new.

That's the way with enthusiasts. For finishing a job, give me the plodder whose imagination is subordinate to his hoe. You see, he is a one-idea man, and the idea may not be his own; but the fellow with the genius for starting things is very seldom there at the finish. He dreams large and turns the details over to more successful men.

This new thing I started concerns[Pg 118] the front plot of garden around the porch. It was a disorganized thing as it stood. I cut out a ditch in front of it, piled all the dirt back against the house and toted baskets of hard stones from a neighboring lot. These I leaned against the sides of the ditch and hammered them in, or cut out the earth and set, making a stone wall that would retain the earth, hold a certain amount of water for irrigation and at the same time be ornamental. It took two hours to make as many yards of this stuff, and several friends called attention to the trouble I was taking for no necessary purpose. Well, that may be so—and probably is—but it is so stupid to be[Pg 119] always doing the necessary things, living on the obvious, plugging along on the course of existence that is common to all.

NINTH PERIOD

By the time I had worn my finger nails to a state of complete dishabille—happy thought!—and had become a hopeless problem for the most sanguine manicurist, I began to learn things really. For instance, this is how a lawn ought to be made:

First, grade your ground, then remove all stones and stumps; next roll it and then put on a couple of inches of top soil; then roll that until there isn't a bump in it, sow your grass seed and water constantly, prayerfully. In making our lawn those are the things they didn't do.

I don't dare rake our lawn, because the minute I start, out will come a lot of bolders, leaving terrific yawns in the sod. I'm sure the Duke will forgive me for getting peeved about that lawn, when he understands that there are callouses in my hands and knots in my lawn mower. Also, why on earth, after throwing on the grass seed, do the men drive wagons over it and make ruts and jam their heels into it and make holes, where my vagrant sprinklings with the hose create lakes and puddles and produce never a single grass?

With a little preliminary exercise, pushing the big road-roller on Garrison avenue and shoving marble blocks[Pg 122] out of the Courthouse, I tackled our lawn with a new mower, put together by myself in accordance with instructions. Our lawn mower is painted a beautiful green on the blades, to keep out the rust. Also, it was never intended to cut. It would never do, in an emergency, to shave with.

Musically, our lawn mower for the first ten feet sang to my soul a song of sweet, rural peace and contentment.

In the course of two dashes I discovered that the spectacle of a bald-headed front-yard farmer trotting up and down behind a lawn mower was[Pg 123] a thing to make acquaintance with. Two men I'd never seen in my life stopped and gazed at me, and one of them asked me if I was mowing my lawn. A little girl came by and stood cross-legged with her finger in her mouth, and, when I looked her way, snickered and ran home to tell her mother what a strange sight she had seen. Our grocer lingered to remark that it was a hot afternoon, and as if in confirmation of his remarkable perspicuity a lake of sweat fell like a cloudburst from my brow and drowned a hill of ants.

"Don't work so hard," said my wife, as I made another turn. "Why don't you take it easy?"

"I am taking it easy," I replied. "All I need now is a leather chair and a highball to look like the Maryland Club in repose!"

Sarcasm is one of my strong points, and my wife realized that she had goaded me into sharp retort, so she giggled at me and ran to the telephone to tell her mother that Henry was perfectly crazy about his new lawn mower and couldn't leave it alone for a minute.

With all those people looking on and my lawn mower hitting a rock or a hole every seven revolutions, I felt cheap. I felt as though it might have been myself whose jawbone was broken by Samson, or who bore[Pg 125] Balaam to Jerusalem. The crowd kept growing, and a stream of honest toil rolled down my spine. Somehow or other I finished the job. Then I looked at the crowd. I left the lawn mower and walked over to them with a deadly glare in my eye.

"Because if you do," I said, "I can tie both hands behind me and lick any six of you right now."

The crowd melted away slowly. One man did stay a moment, but he didn't want to fight. He offered to feel my pulse.

In spite of his sarcasm, and in the[Pg 126] face of all criticism, I insist that I was beginning to learn. For instance, shall I tell you of the time I astonished Campbell?

Campbell was raised in the country. The smell of sod is strong in his nostrils, and he is a handy man with a hoe. Campbell is an agent for the Duke, but time hangs on his hands at moments and he dropped around in a casual sort of way to look at our back yard.

"In that soil," he said, "you'll never make them completely happy. They'll[Pg 127] be crying for home all the time."

"Well, it wasn't built for farming. You always have to put in richer soil. I'll show you."

My wife thinks Campbell is just about right. When he began to talk about how he'd enjoy fixing her garden, and would she please let him have the hoe, rake, spade, and a bucket to tote sod from a pile in the front yard, she began to look upon him as a Dispensation of Providence. Agriculturally, I dwindled in importance as he expanded.

He cut five rows, or furrows, or ditches, or whatever you call them,[Pg 128] with the hoe, and into them he dropped peas, beans, onions, parsley, and parsnips. Then he brought buckets of top soil and dumped it on the seeds along the line, and raked the soil over until it was smooth, and stuck the empty envelopes at the end of the rows for fear my wife would get the peas identified as corn, the beans as peanuts, the onions as cauliflower, the parsley as rhubarb, the parsnips as turnips. Campbell let me bring some more buckets of soil. For that favor I have begun to question the degree of Campbell's kindness.

"Your rows of top soil will start[Pg 129] the seeds," I said, "but never maintain them when they're out. We must get some commercial fertilizer, and the minute the sprouts show, sprinkle it along the sides of the furrows. Then we must soak the farm with a hose."

My wife sneered. "He's right," said Campbell. My wife winked at him to carry on the joke, but he insisted in sign language that I really had the proper dope. She wilted.

"Now," I said, "we'll have William throw five loads of top soil into this next patch, over which we will run a plough, mixing it not less than a foot deep. Then we'll cover it down, roll it and soak it for a week. We will[Pg 130] then be ready to plant our tomato vines and more onions, along the rows of which we'll sprinkle our fertilizer about two sacks to ten yards. This temporary work you've done is about as practical as a school of journalism or poetry. We'll let it stand as a horrible example, but all this goes under, too, in the fall. Then we'll dig trenches around the yard, a foot deep, fill in solid with top soil and after a week of settling plant a double row of hedge, one foot apart in length and six inches apart in width. Am I right?"

I had her gasping. She stared at me in wonder, and Campbell—well, he just stood with his mouth open like[Pg 131] a catfish, admiring and astounded.

That day when a man becomes a hero in his wife's eyes is a triumph such as Napoleon never knew in his greatest moments, and the feel of it outdoes the joy of a Nero in the plaudits of the claque. It isn't necessary to mention that I got it out of a bulletin from the agricultural department.

TENTH PERIOD

Getting acquainted is part and parcel of buying a house. There is something in the human chest that yearns for speaking terms, at least with the fellow who is liable to lend you his lawn mower or by whose wife you may some day be called upon for emergency aid in the culinary department.

Our good friends came out, it's true, and last night Kittie and Lucy Eugenie sat on the porch, and afterward had iced tea and peanut sandwiches in the kitchen, but I mean the[Pg 133] regular acquaintance of the long day that makes the wife forget distances and isolation.

I got acquainted with the nearest neighbor through the courtesy of his advice when I made some fool remark about the nature of the ground for light gardening, and he gave me the benefit of his information to the contrary. We knew one family so intimately that we could almost nod as we passed without fear of being snubbed—but not a soul called, inquired, or seemed to care. It was the busy time, and we didn't mind so much then. When things lightened[Pg 134] up on the labor end we would begin to notice it.

And then we brought Lydie out for the air. Poor little thing! She whooped and whooped and whooped. In the middle of the night she whooped, and she whooped in the morning. She would stop doing almost anything else to run to her auntie and whoop. She knew her responsibility. In the city she had gone from door to door ringing bells and gravely informing the occupants that their children mustn't play with her, because it was catching. She ran her quarantine strictly, but, of course, our new community sharers didn't know that.

The groceryman, milkman, iceman, paper boy, the plumber, carpenter, stableman—all manner of men who circulate—learned that Lydie had the whooping cough. It wasn't long before our neighbors began to take notice—I mean our neighbors several houses removed, and across the street. We already knew our nearest neighbors, and their stout little red-haired heir and the little baby that sang miserere in the stilly night. But the niece with the whooping cough made us talked about and observed. One day a little girl ran up to Lydie.

Lydie promptly produced her jumping rope. And then there was another from the same house, and we discovered, to our joy, that the children of the horny-handed city editor had also had the whooping cough. We didn't need an introduction there, but the play privilege was pie for the baby. First thing I knew baby was on this porch and that porch, and on the way home in the evening I whistled for her and nodded to the grownups who were entertaining her.

But we've lost our intermediary. The other night baby whooped and I whooped. Mine was nervous indigestion, combined with a lot of imagination that makes the patent medicine[Pg 137] business profitable. Between us, baby and I kept up a merry circus all night. She was really sick, and we sent her home to her mother.

Every morning Catherine and Eleanor go out and pick buttercups and forget-me-nots, and bring them to my wife; and she puts them in a vase with the greatest show of gratitude you ever saw, and then proceeds to stuff the children with cakes until they choke, and sends them home full.

Every day the little auburn-haired boy king in the House Next Door trots out with his tiny red wagon and[Pg 138] laboriously drags that treasure of childhood up and down the pavement—sometimes prancing like a race horse, sometimes plodding along like a mule that curses his ancestry, sometimes ambling by like a good-natured family horse, guaranteed not to run away or scare at an automobile!

And the little one—the baby in the go-cart. What a time the baby has watching Big Brother, and admiring his strength as he performs miracles, not only pulling and backing the tiny red wagon all by himself, but actually turning it around and running the other way, without so much as getting caught in the cracks or stuck in the sod! You can see admiration[Pg 139] fairly oozing from baby's eyes; and when he runs at her and pretends to kick his heels into the dashboard, what a laugh she has!

Up the street, where the apartments are with the shiny sets of bells on the front by the door, and the big rocking chairs and air of solid comfort, there are some other children, but I haven't learned their names. They play around the porch and front yard, and run across the street, scampering up the hill to pick flowers from the lots that soon will feel the plow; and their mothers keep an eye on them—not that any accident could happen, for vehicles are scarce out our way and the street car doesn't[Pg 140] enter the quiet of our lives; but just because—well, mothers are a bit peculiar that way—I mean that way of keeping an eye on the young ones.

A fellow never knows what a remarkable head a child has, if he has none of his own, until he begins borrowing babies from the neighbors.

There's Catherine, for instance. Catherine and Eleanor and I were looking for the little pale anemones that hide around the roots of trees. I picked some four-petaled blue flowers and instructed the children.

"No, they're not," said Catherine promptly. "They are bluettes. [Pg 141]Forget-me-nots have five petals and these have only four."

"My teacher told me, and she told me——" which ran into a long lecture on botany and horticulture and forest-lore and things that made me ashamed, for, frankly, I didn't know whether the tree that shaded us was an oak or a maple. I think there should be a limit on male suffrage, and woman domination, and child education. There are some things that make the average man feel cheap, if he has pride.

But this is all about the babies, and about the House only indirectly.[Pg 142] We love children, my wife and I, and, perhaps, we love them the more because we can send them back to where we borrowed them when they become troublesome. But the most wonderful thing about babies to me is that not so long ago we were all, you and I and your neighbor, all helpless, gooing, crowing, dimpling, fat or slim kids, bundled up in carriages and looking wonder-eyed at the great picture life unfolded before us. And these babies around us—some of these days they'll be the men and women, and some of them will borrow babies, and some will cuddle their own.

ELEVENTH PERIOD

When the house was put in order we invited our professional associates jointly—the city editor and myself and our wives—to come out and see us. It was not a dress affair. It was a case of pajamas preferred and boiled shirts common, out under the hot sun in the flat, or lolling under the oaks in the grove, where we had hard benches to make our guests appreciate upholstery. There were fifty guests, boys and girls of all ages, and, Lord, what a time we had! Not that it beat a Hibernian picnic, because it[Pg 144] didn't; but in the pride of your first possession, to have your daily associates come out and look you over and help you enjoy it makes owning a house really worth while.

What with getting ready and getting over it, catching up sleep and massaging aching muscles, that event stands as epochal in the history of our family. For days the wives worried each other to death about what they'd have. First, one would suggest ham sandwiches and chicken salad, and the minute they agreed on that the other would switch in soft crabs and roast beef. Whether to drink coffee, tea, or lemonade, or all three; whether to have a modest[Pg 145] modicum of malt, whether to make a punch or just let the guests drink from the air, like trees and flowers—these were all vexing points, by no means to be settled offhand. And it was not only one night that I was aroused by dream-talk like this:

"Really, I think lemonade would be nicer—and just a few sandwiches and coffee and ice cream, and——" The dream trailed off into a weary sigh that is the closest approach a real lady ever makes to a snore.

Well, it happened. They came by twos and threes, and I toted chairs and camp stools from the house the three long blocks to the grove. At first we made conversation with the[Pg 146] children—Eleanor and Catherine—and then our intellectual dean, observing a Catholic institution nearby, correctly surmised by its mansard slate roof that it was built before the eighties; it was built in '72. With such mental diversions we killed time until the managing editor arrived and started a game of duck on the rock, at which the city editor skinned his shoulder. We ran races, and the littlest copy reader's legs twinkled with joy over the rough course. The girls jumped rope and screamed, and it was altogether kid-dish. Then we ate ham and roast beef sandwiches and drank coffee and cooled our æsophagi with ice cream[Pg 147] and cake chasers. Our member with the porcupine summit insisted upon singing, and the stenographer played all the popular things. We gathered at the reservoir, while two of the men and the healthiest girl ran a marathon around that long mile, and she finished beautifully. Then we sat on the porch and had our pictures taken by flashlight.

Somebody burgled That House and moved the parlor furniture and piano into the dining-room and the dining-room stuff into the parlor. A merry wit tacked attachments to our houses, the managing editor put an "Open for Inspection" sign on the city editor's castle and some one stuck a "For[Pg 148] Rent" placard on ours. And then they began leaving, by twos and threes, and the telephone girl was one of the last to go, lingeringly.

We slept that night—slept the sleep of the properly weary. All sorts of dreams romped through the long stillness and entertained us. The Duke of Mont Alto was in one of mine, and he was telling me something about taxes and water rent. But before his conversation got disagreeable I was awakened by a racket on the roof.

There's a fool woodpecker that comes there every morning at six o'clock and tries to drill through the slate. He's after a nest. It must be hard work. But if he ever gets[Pg 149] through I know how he'll feel. He will have hustled some, but it will have been worth while. Anything is worth while, friend, if the goal is a nest of your own, where you can have your friends out and nobody can tell you to keep off the grass or wipe your feet on the mat—excepting your wife!

Not at all apropo of The House, there's a thought I want to get out of my system. What a lot of braggarts we men are, anyhow—and what a queer old world it is! There are two classes of people in the world—those who are doing something worth while and those who are trying to steal the credit. A modest little hen two or[Pg 150] three doors away laid an egg, and in very few words cackled the event; but you ought to have heard that insufferable rooster! The moment the thing happened he strutted around with his chest out, yelling at the top of his voice, drowning out the whole poultry yard: "Ur-r-r-r, Ur-r-r-r, Ur-r-r-r! I'm the daddy of another egg!" How much more decent it would have been had he quietly stood by, preserving his dignity and judicial calm.

I'm sifting top soil to make our garden right, and my wife is doing wonderful things inside the house with the furniture and fixings. [Pg 151]Every day she turns me around three times and shows me something new—something marvelous of her handiwork, immensely flattering to me since it justifies my judgment in the selection of a helpmeet. Every day the business of buying the house looks more possible and less of a financial mountain. Why, I can even afford to joke with the Duke, who asked me what I intended to plant in our front garden against the porch.

"I think," I said, "I'll plant a nice little row of mortgage vines and let 'em grow up and crawl all over the house. A mortgage vine, Duke, has flowers on it all the year round, and it's the most homelike thing I know."

The Duke enjoyed that immensely—but then he can afford to laugh, because he lives on the other side of the road.

And now the time has come to end this recital of everyday incidents in the personal affairs of Yours Truly—a humble man of no importance whatever, who for that reason may be representative of eighty per cent. of the world's population.

In closing, here is a thought that sticks with me: If I had started to buy a home when I was married, that home would long ago have been my clean-title property. If I had started to systematically bank or invest[Pg 153] twenty per cent. of my earnings from the date of my first cub job, I'd have owned stock in the newspaper that lets me live. If I had to do it all over again—

Why, Lord bless you, I'd do just as I have done! I'd live the same sort of life, be just the same profligate fellow with no care for the morrow, go through just the same sort of trials and troubles and throw them off with just the same sort of optimism. After all, a fellow isn't capable of appreciating to the full a little possession until he has gone the route of silly extravagances and been pulled together by some sudden impulse to be a better citizen. And listen:

Without the least reflection on the good qualities of other men, the very best citizen of any community is the man who has married early and provided a nest of his own—who pays taxes and contributes his share to the happiness of society at large—who obeys the law and is not ashamed to be in love with his own wife—who works hard and plays hard, and who goes fishing.

Enough of That House I Bought. Come out and sit on our porch, and if there is anything in the larder you may sup with us.

THE EVEN DOZENTH,

You might know it was suggested by a woman. No man ever yet resorted to the postscript.

My wife says it ought to go in after everything else, like the tag of a play. I was in favor of leaving the thing in suspense, and annoying the reader—leaving something to tease the imagination. But she said it would be cruel.

The fact is, there was a Parade of Silhouettes across the street last[Pg 156] night. There was a Preacher Silhouette, and there were Best Man and Maid of Honor Silhouettes, and their were Jealous Sister Silhouettes—two of them. There were Village Cut-Up Silhouettes and Silhouettes of Little Girls in Pink Ribbons—we knew they were pink because we saw them going in, stepping high to keep their white slippers clean.

All the Silhouettes gathered under a floral Court of Honor hung to the gas jet, and such a screaming and laughing and talking when it was over, you never heard!

"At last," said my wife, "I shall see that Man Silhouette and that Girl Silhouette in the flesh. I shall sit here[Pg 157] until they start for the train, and then rush across the street and look right into——"

"My roast!" screamed my wife, and dashed madly indoors, followed obediently by her husband.

A lot of idiots were throwing rice and shoes and flowers up the street. We followed the line of attack and there was the carriage, being hauled off by galloping horses to catch a train for Niagara Falls, with a slipper rattling out behind, and a streamer bearing the legend:

"And to think," said my wife, "that after all my sisterly solicitude I have never seen the bride!"

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	PAGE
Dedication	5
First Period	7
Second Period	18
Third Period	31
Fourth Period	42
Fifth Period	54
Sixth Period	68
Seventh Period	90
Eighth Period	105
Ninth	120
Tenth	132
Eleventh	143
The Even Dozenth	155

The Project Gutenberg eBook of That House I Bought: A little leaf from life

That House I Bought

DEDICATION

CONTENTS